Russell M Davies: The irrationality of the watch

This article was taken from the February issue of Wired UK magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.

The fundamental unit of human endeavour is the watch: the humble wristwatch. If you really want to understand the human race in all its astonishing complexity and fearsome irrationality, spend some time thinking about watches. You might even want to write one of those narrative non-fiction books about them. Like Salt or Cod -- but Watch. If you do, here is a rough survey of the territory:

Let's start with the chapter on behavioural economics. Ever tempted by Freakonomics or Nudge, or one of those books about how people aren't very rational and how many of their economic choices are in fact emotional? Don't bother. Just get yourself to a watch shop; watches are the ultimate proof that we're not rational. You can get a watch accurate enough for all conceivable human purposes for about three quid. Pay anymore than that, and you're doing something else. You're projecting brand values, asserting status, embracing aesthetics -- something other than telling the time. Even if you just want function, you're probably doing something similar. The Casio F91W is a simple Chinese-made digital watch that costs around £10. Yet it's a cult, seen on some of the most discerning, geeky wrists because its simple, robust construction appeals to industrial-design fans (and, purportedly, terrorists, who appreciate its ubiquity and reliability as a timing device).

Then you should do a chapter on mechanical watches, and think about the extraordinary things they say about our world. People pay thousands for extreme precision- engineering, which does the job slightly less well than a cheap bit of quartz. Why does this industry exist? I suspect it's not just heavily branded man-jewellery, but more nuanced. William Gibson suggests: "Mechanical watches partake of the 'Tamagotchi gesture': they are pointless yet needful, comforting precisely because they require tending." That feels true: we can't help but connect to something we wind every day -- we end up needing the things that need us. But we're also drawn into the sheer exuberance of the engineering, even if it has no practical value. It's like performance engineering, almost postmodern in that it is about nothing other than itself. So where most of us don't get art, and don't really see the point of it, maybe engineering aesthetics fill a little hole in our cultural lives.

And then you would have to devote some attention to watches and the Idea of the Future, because every respectable future scenario involves strapping something extraordinary to your wrist. Weapons, cameras, sensors, communicators-all apparently appropriate things to attach to your arm. Which leaves the technology companies with very little imagining to do; they just have to get on with the manufacture.

Ever since 1946, when Dick Tracy started using his wrist watch radio, and 1964, when he upgraded it to TV, the development cycle for wrist-tech has been clear. And yet, adding smarts to a watch seems a reliable assurance of failure. Remember the Casio WMP-1V? It was an MP3- playing watch about the size of a Wagon Wheel, which could handle a whopping 33 minutes of audio and last for four solid hours before charging -- for some reason it didn't find a home on every wrist. There were all those watches built on Microsoft's SPOT technology. You could pay a subscription and get weather info via a tiny graphic, and they worked in a quite a few US cities; again, for some baffling reason, not as popular as sliced bread. LG is the latest to have a stab with its GD910 Watch Phone. (These companies are good at names, aren't they?) It does speech and video, it tells the time, it's about £500 -- but will it sell? Who knows. But it's good to know that watches continue to fascinate.

And that might have to be the conclusion to your watch book; there's no need ever to wear a watch, but we continue to do it. The time is all over the place these days; on every screen, in every pocket, we don't need it under our cuffs as well. Except maybe to ease that moment when a conversation's gone on too long and you want to leave. That's what a watch is for, and that's why we'll always have them. Which is my cue to notice you staring at your collectable Swatch and sign off.

Edited by Mark Brown

Comments

Thanks Russell. Just bought a Casio F91W for A$9.95 off eBay. But I'm terrified of watches since being scolded by my mum for losing a my first watch at age 9.

Hugh

Feb 18th 2010

Hi, good post. I have been thinking about this issue,so thanks for sharing. I will definitely be coming back to your blog.